Land Day

Abu Saleh, a 73-year-old farmer, speaks with a raspy but strong voice as he points to his crops. “Everything you see around you is food grown from my own land. These carrots, this zucchini, these olives…they are all part of my survival.” He lifts his head, his voice starting to shake with anger. “Now they want to tear down my home and remove me from my livelihood. They want to rip my heart from my land – just to put the heart of someone else.” Abu Saleh is a resident of Ramiya, an Arab community of 50 families nestled within…

Putting up signs marking destroyed Palestinian towns and villages could bring about a more moral discourse about the Nakba and its victims. By Eitan Bronstein Aparicio About two weeks ago, far from the public eye, something with potentially far-reaching and serious consequences occurred in Israel: An inspector on a local planning committee recommended that a sign be placed at a site slated for development in the city of Ashkelon, mentioning the Palestinian town of Hamama that stood there until 1948. [tmwinpost] The inspector’s recommendation came in response to an objection to the development submitted by De-Colonizer, a research and art laboratory…

Palestinians mark Land Day across Israel and the West Bank, politics take center stage in Israel, laid off workers take to the streets, a number of social and political struggles intensify, Gaza struggles to recover from last summer’s devastating war, and Palestinians and Israelis continue popular resistance against the occupation.

The word 'occupation' evokes the West Bank, but the policies of land expropriation and Judaization were perfected inside Israel long before they were used on Palestinians in the occupied territories. In 2005, Amnon Raz-Karkotzkin, a professor of Jewish history at Ben-Gurion University known to his friends and associates simply as Nono, published a seminal article titled "There is No God, But He Promised Us the Land." The article, published in Hebrew in Mitaam, an Israeli journal devoted to literature and radical political thought, captured perfectly the spirit of the Zionists who founded the State of Israel. While Judaism may have…

On Land Day in Jaffa, a demonstration was held in the city’s clock square, but the highlight was a lecture by Professor Ilan Pappe on what he and others term the ongoing Nakba and a ‘single democratic state' solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Pappe’s full lecture can be watched here in Hebrew. Related: ‘When I look at the Prawer Plan, I see another Nakba’ For Palestinians, the Nakba is not history Israel gives Palestinians new reasons to mark Land Day

Like other Palestinian national days, Land Day commemorations are less about the historical event as they are reminders of things happening today. Despite years of active struggles, Palestinians are finding themselves protesting the same threats to their land rights in 2014 as they were in 1976. March 30 marks the 38th anniversary of Land Day, which commemorates the mass Palestinian demonstrations against Israel’s sweeping confiscation of Arab lands in the Galilee in 1976. But like other Palestinian national days, the commemorations are less about the historical event as they are reminders of things that are happening today. Despite years of…

To commemorate the 38th "Land Day", marked on 30 March 2014, Adalah - The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, decided to research the policy of ‘state land’ allocation. This data revealed that the ILA and the Ministry of Construction and Housing persist in their discriminatory policies against Arab-Palestinian citizens in Israel in various fields of development. The ILA and the Ministry also continue to place Palestinian land on the market for mass housing construction in the illegal settlements in the 1967 occupied territories, and sell property belonging to Palestinian refugees, thereby further obstructing the likelihood for their…

On March 30, 1976, Israeli police repressed protests by Palestinian citizens of Israel against the confiscation of Arab land in the Galilee for use by Jewish citizens. Six protesters were killed, some 100 wounded and hundreds were arrested. Ever since, Palestinians in Israel, the Occupied Territories and the Diaspora mark Land Day on March 30. ‘Ha’olam Hazeh,’ a magazine published by Uri Avnery, was the only Israeli media outlet to challenge the state’s narrative of the events at the time. The following, a testimony from an Israeli police officer who was present that day, is short item 'Ha'olam Hazeh' published…

Today, with no resolution in sight to the historic injustices inflicted upon them, Palestinians in Israel and elsewhere use this day to remember and redouble their efforts for emancipation. By Sam Bahour and Fida Jiryis Every year since 1976, on March 30, Palestinians around the world have commemorated Land Day. Though it may sound like an environmental celebration, Land Day marks a bloody day in Israel when security forces gunned down six Palestinians as they protested Israeli expropriation of Arab-owned land in the country’s north to build Jewish-only settlements. The Land Day victims were not Palestinians from the occupied territory…

The time has come to allow ourselves to see this country not only as the battleground of a national struggle but as a shared homeland, which with painful concessions and tremendous confidence-building efforts on both sides, we can turn into a good place where our children will want to live. By Ron Gerlitz As Israel’s Jewish citizens celebrated the Passover holiday last month, its Arab citizens commemorated Land Day. Land Day is a commemoration of the death of six Arab demonstrators in 1976 while protesting massive government land expropriations in the Galilee for the purpose of building new Jewish communities.…

This week: commemorations of Land Day across Israel and the West Bank, solidarity marches in the South Hebron Hills, clashes ensue after a prisoner's death, an Israeli draft refuser, and South Africans march for justice.

In characterizing all non-violent Palestinian measures as terrorism, Israel insults the memory of victims of real acts of terror. By Lara Friedman Yesterday was Yom Hazikaron, Israeli Remembrance Day. Every year on this day Israelis stop to remember their fellow citizens who have given their lives for the sake of Israel, whether in wars or at the hands of terrorists. On this day, Israelis think a lot about terrorism. Israelis have a uniquely personal and painful understanding of what the word means. Exploding packages and buses leave an indelible mark on any person possessing the eyes to see, the ears…

About +972 Magazine

+972 is an independent, blog-based web magazine. It was launched in August 2010, resulting from a merger of a number of popular English-language blogs dealing with life and politics in Israel and Palestine.

+972 is an independent, blog-based web magazine. It was launched in August 2010, resulting from a merger of a number of popular English-language blogs dealing with life and politics in Israel and Palestine.